There is in increasing need to automatically control and monitor the entry, egress and on-site movements of occasional visitors, who have access to secure facilities.
Schools, are generally perceived as secure facilities for children, yet have a flow of occasional visitors, such as substitute teachers, parents and repair personnel into and out of the facility during a typical day who may not personally be known to the permanent school staff. The monitoring of these individuals while on school premises is generally loosely observed by the permanent on-site staff, but typically their purpose and reason for entry and on-site movement is only casually challenged by a receptionist or other school personnel that might be stationed close enough to the entry way of the building to observe the flow. It's rare for schools and many other similar facilities to afford an employee dedicated solely to guarded challenge of individuals entering or exiting the premises, and even rarer are they adequately trained for the job, so that the task thereof is frequently poorly done.
Schools are in a constant battle between the social ideal of individual freedom and the responsibility to provide a safe academic haven. Most schools reject highly visible and personally intrusive guarded challenge systems, and the result is generally a staff employee, who amongst many other jobs has a responsibility to intercept visitors and either through personal recognition, guess or just plain intuition, determine whether or not the visitor is the person alleged to be, is properly authorized to be there, and/or whether or not the visitor might represent a threat to the facility or others who may be within the facility. Even when the identification of an unrecognized person is requested, it rarely goes beyond a cursory look at a driver's license or the like to confirm whom the person alleges to be, as distinct from any awareness of any possible threat the person might bring.
Methods have been proposed to automate identification and entry of visitors, but generally such methods still rely upon the cooperative participation of a staff employee who is left to personally review identification provided by the visitor, and perhaps verify the purpose and parameters of entry. The decision to allow entry or not, is then made by the staff member who is generally ill equipped to confront or otherwise deal with a suspicious visitor seeking entry.
The problem with prior methods is that they are labor intensive, requiring the skilled efforts of a specially trained employee to be accomplished appropriately. Finding an employee specifically dedicated and trained for appropriate face-to-face interrogation of a visitor and generation of an identity card or the like is difficult, especially one who also may be assigned other competing duties and must accomplish same while being constantly disrupted with such competing duties. Another problem is that there is no adequate method for assuring the consideration of updated data. For example, the identification used by the visitor may be invalid or false, or the visitor may be of unsavory character or may have recent disqualifying incidents which are not reflected in the identification.
One object of the invention is to provide a self-operated, photo-identification system, which automatically searches available data sources and generates a printed photo-identification card, label, badge or the like, or aborts the generation thereof based upon data obtained from said search.
Another object of the invention is to provide a self-operated, photo-identification, secure facility entry system which assigns parameters for entry to the facility and generates a photo-identification card, badge, label or the like comprising such parameters, which can be conspicuously seen by other personnel during the visit.
A further object of the invention is to provide a photo-identification system which automatically generates identification of a visitor by comparing current photo and record identity and visitor entered data with state automotive licensing records, penal system records and current computer entered data and automatically advise the user and/or receptionist to disqualifying attributes and/or generate an appropriate identification for temporary use.